What It Means to Be a Furry

Being a furry is not about liking cartoon animal porn and kinky, costumed sex. It can be. For some, that's the biggest draw. For Dominic Rodriguez, director of the new furry documentary, Fursonas, it was furry porn that first piqued his interest. But as a community—not a sex cult, not a fan club—furry is about interest in anthropomorphic animals, in feeling and expressing and living in an animal form.

It is also, as Rodriguez found while shooting his documentary, a community obsessed with image. You can see why. Furry is fetishized and misunderstood, at best a game of dress-up and at worst a freak show.

Fursonas, named after the animal personas furries adopt, was meant to be a series of portraits, and it began that way. But as the crew edited together the simple vignettes, thinking the documentary was close to done, they came across videos of Uncle Kage. And so entered the documentary villain.

Kage is a furry. He is also aggressively PR-minded, an unofficial reputation manager who rails against any unsavory furries who let the public in. His stance is that the furry culture the public gets to see is a furry culture devoid of sex.

His extremism does not represent all furries, and Rodriguez includes quite a spectrum in Fursonas. There's Boomer the dog, who welcomes questions, interviews, and TV spots on Dr. Phil;Diesel the raccoon chooses to remain masked while on camera. Each questions: What is more important, community or individual identity?

Fursonas is clear in its views, as is Rodriguez. It gets political. Outside the drama, it is a profile of a community not many people understand, a community that is far from homogenous. (As for the costumed sex—can you imagine getting it on under pounds of sweltering fake fur?)

We talked to Rodriguez about sex, stigma, and the four-year process of filming Fursonas.

ESQ: Why did you decide to make a documentary about furries?

Rodriguez: I've been interested in this stuff for a really long time, looking at furry content since I was maybe 12 years old, studied it from a distance. I didn't know a ton about the social side of furry. I had never been to a convention before. I didn't have a suit. I didn't even consider myself a furry really, but I was—I lied. I didn't let my crew know I was into it. I was basically a furry in disguise for two years.

Why didn't you tell anyone?

I wanted to think of it as a filmmaker first, and I wanted to have the objectivity—at least what I thought would be objectivity, which obviously the film is not objective at all. I learned to embrace that bias as the years went on. If I told all my subjects I was a furry, I feel like it wouldn't be the same as earning their trust on my own.

Also, I was embarrassed because the reason why I got into all of this was because of porn. That was like, absolutely the reason for me, and then now, I enjoy many aspects of the fandom.

As you watch the documentary, you realize the subjects you chose represent all sides of a debate among the furry community. How did you pick these people?

I started out wanting to talk to people who had suits. That was my criteria. Because not every furry has a costume. That's something I've already taken some heat from the community for: "People are going to think that we all wear costumes!" But I'm like, is that really that awful of a thing to assume? It shows the people are passionate enough to go that extra mile. I needed some kind of diversity, so I knew that one of them was a mother, but for the most part it was just about meeting people—I knew what their suits looked like, that was it. And then in the end I sought out people specifically because I thought there were some holes.

You document this split in the community between acceptance and this really intense reputation management. How did you see this as a furry yourself, but also as a member of the media?

I always knew that furries were concerned about their image. It's a trip to be coming at it from both sides, to be aware of why, being a furry myself and to understand what's at stake, but then to also be someone who tells stories and wants to share things with the world. It's a weird line to walk. But I didn't know when I started it how protective some people were and exactly how far some of this went. Uncle Kage, all that stuff. I knew about him, but I didn't know about the media panels he did and how deep it went.

What was it like to discover that as you were working?

That was the turning point of the whole process. The movie took four years to make, and for much of that process I was militantly trying not to have too much of a story. The movie was weird, experimental even, just portraits of different people that didn't really connect that much. And I was fine with that because I didn't want to create a story where there wasn't one. I was so hung up on it being real.

People recommended that we talk to [Uncle Kage]. I searched a little bit farther in that direction. All those videos of him talking are available online for free—they're just on Youtube. So it's not like we snuck in and filmed that stuff. It was right in front of me, and it was crazy how nobody had really talked about this stuff. It was this incredible story, actually, and I felt like I couldn't ignore what was in front of me, and I had to go farther down that road. We filmed for another year after that.

Why did you feel you had to change the direction of the film?

It was so fascinating, that dynamic between furries and the media, and that question of who can be a spokesperson, can there be a spokesperson, and that tension of wanting to be true to yourself versus protecting the community. It's also maybe things that hopefully would extend beyond furry, just talking about communities and people.

How do the sex lives of furries play into this conversation? Is it important to talk about?

People don't have to talk about things that they don't want to talk about, but the important thing is if somebody wants to talk about it, then they shouldn't be not allowed to talk about it because other people are uncomfortable. Each furry decided what is public and private for them.

For somebody like Boomer, there's no separation at all, and it's incredibly important to him that it all be integrated. From working on the movie, I came to relate and aspire to be more like Boomer. He's kind of like a role model to me in the sense that he's the only person I've ever met who 100 percent just doesn't give a shit, and it's amazing. People ask me if he's crazy, and honestly, not in a way you think, no, because he's actually really smart and really self-aware. But I think you do have to be kind of crazy to not care to the extent he doesn't care.

When people think of furries, they think of sex in animal costumes and all that. Do you think that's a harmful stigma?

I think if people think it's just a sex thing, as if we were just into porn, that's a misconception. Hopefully the movie will show that there's more to it than that. It's a really vibrant, interesting, unique community. I think calling it just a fetish is doing it a disservice. BUT. I think sexuality is part of identity, and that's important and complicated and interesting, and I think that just so many furries will play that down in the effort to mainstream this community and give it a "good name." I think that's a mistake, because it's not as simple as that. It's a spectrum, and I think everybody's on it.

What does being a furry mean to you now, after you finished making this documentary?

So many things in my life have changed since then. I have a suit now. I go to conventions whenever I get the chance. I'd go every month if I could. It's a huge part of my life when it wasn't before. The weirdest thing is this was the thing nobody knew about me. This was the only thing that nobody knew. And now it's the thing that I am known for and it will be the only thing—now I'm talking to Esquire about it! it's a very strange turn of events that I'm still getting used to.

The community is the thing. The community is all about the people in it, and I really care about the community.When I started it, I didn't have as much as a stake in it. I was really more brutal in the sense I really didn't care about giving furries a good name or not. That was irrelevant to me. All I wanted to do was make something real. The difference now is I do care more, and I've met too many people to not lose sleep over what I've done.

Have you heard any reactions from people who are focused on protecting the stereotype and the reputation of furries?

Everybody's worried about some image released, and they instantly go into panic mode. In the movie, you can see how they all jump on Boomer for having his paper costume—everybody I talked to who isn't a furry thinks that costume is one of the coolest ones, because it's creative and interesting, and that's something furries will jump on. Like, "People are going to think we're all poor, that we can't afford quality costumes"—just ridiculous things like that. It's like we're looking for reasons for people to hate us, when I think that actually, most people don't give that much of a shit.

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